Who and I

Once upon a time, not so long ago, if I typed here that I was a Doctor Who fan, you’d have mocked me and generally took the piss. There may well have been good grounds for this, as prior to 2005, the show was much derided, and an easy target for jokes about wobbly sets, dodgy aliens, bad acting & special effects that were anything but.

Ah but not now. Since 2005, it’s become okay to openly say “I like Doctor Who”, without people pointing at you, laughing and making you move out of the borough. Now it’s sexy. It’s fashionable. It’s hip. It’s got all the best acting talent in the UK clamouring to get onto it. It’s the biggest drama hit the BBC has had in years. It’s also the same show that was mocked years before, the same show that the BBC ran down until it became a sad parody of it’s former self, the same programme that had some of the worst miscasting ever in it’s later years. It’s the show I loved… and still love.

I grew up with Tom Baker you see. Not literally, as that would make me ancient, but with him as my Doctor. You had to have your own Doctor, in the same way you’ve got to have your James Bond or your Blue Peter presenter (Connery & Noakes, if you’re interested). Okay, Pertwee was technically my first Doctor but Tom was the man I consciously (well as much as you can at age 5) tuned in each week for.

From 1974 to 1981, as I went from infants up through juniors up to senior school, Baker travelled with me every Saturday for 26 weeks a year. People forget that the show was popular back then. It wasn’t cult TV. Families watched the show in their millions as it formed that rock upon which the BBC Saturday night TV line up was built. Football results. Basil Brush. Doctor Who. Brucie. Some drama or other. Two Ronnies. Starsky & Hutch. Match Of The Day. Parky. Bed.

Yes it could be a bit ropey but it wasn’t about the production values. It was about the story and the characters, and you believed in Baker’s Doctor, so much so you mostly overlooked the programme’s flaws as you were gripped so much by his performance.

Blackpool is almost a second home for Who, as the Exhibition was based here for so many years until it’s demise in 1985. And my parents took me to see it, as well as going one September night to see Tom, Elisabeth Sladen (ah! Sarah Jane!) and Ian Marter switch on the Illuminations in 1975, fighting off Cybermen & Daleks in their quest to pull the lever that turned on the lights. My darling Celia even met the man himself once when she was little, as he lost his way to the exhibition and asked her mum for directions. Well I say met. Hiding behind your mum’s legs counts doesn’t it?

I grew up. Honest. Peter Davison was the man who was the Doctor in my senior school years, and as I grew older, I began to take more interest in the show, it’s history, how it was made etc. Also as you get older you become more critical of the show, less blind to it’s faults. I still loved the show, and Davison is only second to Baker in my Top 10, but even at that age I could see that the show was becoming a bit insular, whereas it was previously aimed at the family audience, now the producer was progressively aiming the show at.. the Doctor Who fan. When you start playing to the gallery, you’re going to alienate the average viewer. The kids went elsewhere for their kicks.

So the show went on through the 80s, audiences dwindling as Doctors came & went, the BBC becoming less interested in making the show but loving the cash they made from selling it and the merchandise round the world, progressively killing the show but scheduling it against shows on the other channel that it could never beat it it’s current state (Daleks vs Ken & Deirdre? No contest). The Colin Baker era I could just about handle, mainly down to lusting after Nicola Bryant (hey! I was in my teens) but when Sylvester McCoy & Bonnie Langford arrived, even I couldn’t really justify watching the programme. Much.

When the show ended in 1989, there were no tears. The last series had it’s moments but too little too late. There were rumours it would be back in a couple of years, but I wasn’t the naive kid any more, I knew how the industry worked and it was obvious it was over as an ongoing TV show. There were always the videos to look back over, but looking back was all we’d have.

However, spin forward and 1996 saw the American & BBC co-funded revival of Who, starring Paul McGann, who was great even if he is a scouser. It was all very glossy and looked great if again, a bit continuity obsessed, and ratings were good in the UK. Alas, in the US it died on it’s arse and that was the end of the 8^th doctor’s ninety minute era.

I never went the full hog and became part of organised fandom. There always seemed to me to be something fundamentally.. wrong about the whole thing, you know, conventions and all that. Of course the way the show had been going in the latter part of the 80s, it was something you had to keep to yourself as it was frankly shocking, so I was quite happy not to seek out likeminded people. It was only during the dark years of the 90s that I became aware of fandom, and became sort of one of them, looking in from the outside, buying books, videos and fanzines. Fandom kept the Who brand alive in those years, with fanzine writers becoming Virgin novelists or writing for the ever popular Doctor Who magazine (27 years old this month kids!).

It was these fans that eventually worked their way up into positions of power and influence in the industry. A certain Mr Russell T Davies, who wrote a Who novel in the 90s worked many references to the show into his 1999 Channel 4 hit “Queer As Folk”. Another fan novelist, Mark Gatiss (of the League Of Gentlemen) played the Doctor in a spoof sketch also starring David Walliams who with Matt Lucas would go on to use Tom Baker’s voiceovers in Little Britain. (Why? Because he was Doctor Who of course). Steven Moffat wrote several Who short stories and shoed in many a Who joke into his Coupling series, as well as a Comic Relief sketch with the likes of Hugh Grant & Rowan Atkinson. There are many other examples… Lee & Herring, Simon Pegg and so on.

Davies was asked by the BBC what he’d like to do next. He said “Doctor Who”. They said.“okay”. And that was it. Easy as that. You’ve got one of the hottest writers in Television given carte blanche to make a new series of his favourite show as a kid. Jammy bastard.

It could have all gone wrong. He could have miscast the Doctor completely and the show would be on it’s arse again. But he asked one of the pickiest actors in the business if he’d be interested in playing the lead role in a million pound reworking of one of the oldest series on TV. Lucky he’d worked with him before or else he’d have had the door slammed in his face. Christopher Eccleston said yes. He’d never seen the show really before but would give it a go because of Russell. But who to have as a companion? Howzabout an ex-teen pop star and wannabe actress who’s always looking pissed in the tabloids with her DJ husband?

The rest seems to be history. Billie Piper has more than proved herself to be a great actress as well as a cute eye candy for Dads everywhere, Eccleston shone (all too briefly IMHO) in a role that he grabbed and made his own, the show looks great, it’s restablished itself as unmissible on Saturday nights, millions watch it, ladies love their sexy new Doctors (who'd have thought that 20 years ago?), kids love it, the toyshops are full of Daleks & Cybermen, and new Doctor David Tennant has reignited the debate we used to have back in the day… “well, I prefer Eccleston, he’s my doctor. This new one’s not as good, he's just silly and gurns too much”.

I love Doctor Who, old and new. Everything about it. The whole thing. Sarah Jane Smith. Zygons. K-9. The Brigadier. Torchwood. Even the rubbish bits, like Kamelion or Peter Kay. Even that episode with the girl with the drawings that come to life. Even Ace.

Well, maybe not Ace. Now she was embarrassing.